StrengthShards

Bounty-hunter progression for Paper 26.2 (Minecraft 26.2). Every player kill grants permanent +1 Strength (bonus attack damage); every death to another player takes one away. Veterans hit harder, victims hit softer — and the whole strength economy is player-driven through craftable, tradeable, edible Strength Shards.

• Requires a Paper 26.2 server (or newer 26.x) and Java 25
• No client mods required — the optional resource pack just improves the shard's texture
• Everything is configurable and survives restarts

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The core loop

Event	Effect
You kill a player	+1 Strength (permanent bonus attack damage)
You die to a player	−1 Strength
You eat a Strength Shard	+1 Strength
You withdraw strength	Strength becomes physical shards you can trade, gift or gamble away

Strength is stored per-player UUID in plugins/StrengthShards/data.yml and persists across deaths, logins and server restarts. Being at ±0 strength is the neutral default.

The bounty-hunter twist

• You can't farm empty players. Killing someone who is already at minimum strength grants nothing — they have no strength left to give. The killer is told so, which doubles as intel: that target is worthless until they eat shards.
• Capped killers still get paid. A player already at max strength who kills someone can't absorb more strength, so the victim drops a Strength Shard instead — straight into the killer's inventory. If the killer's inventory is full, the shard drops on the ground at the death spot where anyone can steal it.
• Weakness is felt, not crippling. Negative strength reduces your total melee damage by a percentage, so drained players can still fight back — they just hit softer. (See below for why it isn't a flat reduction.)

How the damage works

The bonus is applied to the attack_damage attribute — the same mechanic Strength potions use — so it stacks with swords, axes and enchantments.

• Positive strength: flat +1 attack damage per point (+3 Strength = +3 damage on every melee hit).
• Negative strength: −15% total melee damage per point below zero (default; at −3 that's −45%, capped at −90% overall).

Why isn't negative strength flat? Since Minecraft 1.21.2, the attack_damage attribute is hard-clamped to a minimum of 0, and the game silently skips your entire attack (no damage, no knockback, no sound — even in creative mode) whenever the value isn't strictly above 0. A flat −3 on a bare fist (base 1.0) would make the player completely unable to hit anything. A percentage penalty keeps the value above zero, so weakened players always stay in the fight.

The plugin uses transient attribute modifiers that are re-applied on join/respawn and stripped on disable — no base values or item stats are ever touched, and nothing is left behind in your playerdata if you remove the plugin.

The Strength Shard

A custom item (blaze powder base) that grants +1 Strength when eaten — hold right-click like food, works even on a full hunger bar. Shards at the max cap refuse to be consumed (they aren't wasted) and are fully stackable, making them a natural currency: buy, sell, gift, gamble or hoard them.

Get shards by:

• Crafting — 4 blaze powder around 1 diamond (toggleable in the config):

  .  blaze powder  .
  blaze powder  diamond  blaze powder
  .  blaze powder  .
  

• Withdrawing your own strength — /strength withdraw 2 turns 2 of your strength into 2 shards

• Killing capped players or being capped yourself — see the bounty rules above

• Admin commands — /strength give, or vanilla /give (see below)

Shards carry an identifying data tag, so items created by the plugin, by admins, or via vanilla /give are all recognized and interchangeable.

Commands

Main command: /strength — aliases /str, /shards

Command	Description	Permission
/strength or /strength check	Check your own strength and current bonus	strength.use
/strength check <player>	Check another player's strength (online or offline)	strength.admin
/strength withdraw <amount|all>	Convert your strength into Strength Shards (only positive strength can be withdrawn)	strength.use
/strength givecmd [amount]	Prints the exact vanilla /give command for shards as a click-to-copy message	strength.use
/strength pack	Re-send the resource pack prompt	strength.use
/strength set <player> <amount>	Set a player's strength (clamped to your configured caps; works offline)	strength.admin
/strength give <player> <amount>	Give Strength Shards directly	strength.admin
/strength reload	Reload the configuration (caps, item, recipe, messages)	strength.admin

Tab completion is provided for subcommands, player names and common amounts.

Permissions

Permission	Purpose	Default
strength.use	Check your own strength, withdraw shards, print the give command, re-send the resource pack	everyone
strength.admin	Set/give strength, check other players, reload the config	server operators

Configuration

plugins/StrengthShards/config.yml — change anything and run /strength reload (or restart):

Setting	Default	Description
caps.max-strength	3	Highest reachable strength
caps.min-strength	-3	Lowest sinkable strength
pvp.kill-gain	1	Strength gained per player kill (gated by the victim's actual loss)
pvp.death-loss	1	Strength lost when killed by a player
pvp.negative-strength-penalty-per-point	0.15	Damage fraction lost per negative strength point (max total −90%)
pvp.shard-drop.enabled	true	Max-strength killers receive a shard from the victim instead
pvp.shard-drop.amount	1	Shards dropped per max-strength kill
item.name / item.lore / item.glint	—	Shard display name, lore and enchant glint
item.custom-model-data	2301	Model-data value the resource pack matches against
crafting.enabled	true	Toggle the crafting recipe
resource-pack.auto-send	true	Prompt players to install the pack on join
resource-pack.url / sha1 / required / prompt	—	Resource pack delivery settings
messages.*	—	Every message, including the prefix, in MiniMessage format

Resource pack (optional)

Without a resource pack, shards look like an enchanted blaze powder with a custom name — fully functional. Install the included resource pack and they render as a proper crystal shard.

1. Take the included strength-shards-resourcepack.zip and host it anywhere players can download it (your web server, a file host, a CDN)
2. Put the URL (and optionally its SHA-1 hash) into config.yml under resource-pack.url / resource-pack.sha1
3. Restart or /strength reload — players are prompted on join, and /strength pack re-sends the prompt

The pack uses the 1.21.4+ items/ model system (range_dispatch on custom_model_data), built for resource pack format 88 / Minecraft 26.2. If a future client warns the pack was made for an older version, it still applies once accepted — just bump pack.mcmeta if the warning bothers you.

Obtaining shards without the plugin economy (admins)

Server plugins cannot register custom item IDs and the vanilla creative menu is hardcoded client-side, so shards can't appear in either. Instead, run /strength givecmd in-game — it prints a ready-to-paste vanilla command built from your current config, e.g.:

give <player> minecraft:blaze_powder[minecraft:custom_name={text:"Strength Shard",color:"gold",italic:false},minecraft:lore=[{text:"Consume to permanently gain +1 Strength",color:"gray",italic:false},{text:"Hold right-click to eat. Tradeable!",color:"gray",italic:false}],minecraft:custom_data={PublicBukkitValues:{"strengthshards:strength_shard":1b}},minecraft:custom_model_data={floats:[2301f]},minecraft:food={nutrition:0,saturation:0.0f,can_always_eat:true},minecraft:consumable={consume_seconds:1.6f,animation:"eat",sound:"minecraft:entity.generic.eat",has_consume_particles:true},minecraft:enchantment_glint_override=true]

Items created this way are identical to crafted/withdrawn shards — the plugin recognizes and accepts them.

Installation

1. Drop StrengthShards-x.x.x.jar into your server's plugins/ folder
2. Restart the server (Paper 26.2, Java 25)
3. Optionally configure the resource pack URL (see above) and run /strength reload

Data is plain YAML in plugins/StrengthShards/data.yml — human-readable, editable, and trivial to back up. Removing the plugin cleanly reverts every player to vanilla stats.

FAQ

Does it work with Spigot? No — it targets Paper 26.2 (it uses Paper's data-component and Adventure APIs).

Can two players trade strength? Yes — one withdraws shards and hands them over; the other eats them. That's the whole point!

Can I change the crafting recipe ingredients? The recipe itself is fixed (4 blaze powder + 1 diamond) but can be disabled entirely (crafting.enabled: false); use /strength give or the vanilla give command to distribute shards another way.

What if a killer is at max and their victim is at min? The victim has nothing to give, so no strength moves — but the max-strength killer still receives the shard drop bounty.